Mai-Chan’s Daily Life (2014) Review

Torture porn is a controversial term but when it comes to Mai-Chan’s Daily Life, the film version of Waita Uziga’s goru manga Mai-chan no nichijô I can’t think of anything else to call it. And, by the way, you can take that as a warning that this is some pretty rough stuff.

The basic plot, and it is very basic, Miyako (Miyako Akane) answers an ad for a live-in maid at a large estate. She meets The Master (Shôgo Maruyama) and Kaede (Soaco Roman) and finds out she won’t be their only maid, Mai (An Koshi, Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead 4) is already in their employ.

The job interview involves stripping naked, and the maids have to dress like cats and eat their meals from bowls on the floor, but that’s just the tip of this iceberg of kinks and perversities that make up Mai-Chan’s Daily Life. As it turns out, Mai is immortal. No matter what you cut off it grows back, whatever you do to her heals. Which sets the stage for some truly twisted games of sex and violence.

The estate’s owners rent Mai out to rich perverts looking to get their sadistic jollies when they’re not using her for their own pleasure. Miyako is invited to join in and finds great pleasure in torturing Mai who seems to take her own pleasure from it and the two begin to bond.

Not being very well versed in Japanese extreme cinema I had no idea what I was in for. I was frequently shaking my head and muttering “what the fuck?”. If nothing else I have to give director Sade Satô who also adapted the manga credit for not being afraid to get very creative with the depravity. Who would ever have imagined a chainsaw could be a sex toy?

While it isn’t very explicit in terms of sex, what’s the point if you have to digitally blur it anyway, you can easily tell what’s going on most of the time anyway. The violence is distinctly graphic. Fingers are cut off, eyes are gouged out and there’s disembowelment and dismemberment as well. The effects are, mostly pretty good, and obviously where whatever budget Mai-Chan’s Daily Life had went.

Mai-Chan’s Daily Life is rough from a technical perspective as well. It was very obviously shot on video and it doesn’t look like a very high-end camera was used. The picture quality is not the best but I suppose it’s kind of fitting this looks like a low-end porn or horror film. The sound has its issues as well with the score drowning out the cast at times.

Mai-Chan’s Daily Life certainly wasn’t my kind of fetish film, but I have to admit it kept me watching, and not just because I agreed to review it. There was a strong sense of what the hell are they going to do next? Now that I’ve seen what they do next I doubt I’ll want to see it again, but I can’t say it bored me. This is well past the necrophilic fantasies of eROTik and on its own level of extreme.

On the other hand, if this is your this is your idea of a fetish film you’ll probably have a better time than me with it. You can order Mai-Chan’s Daily Life from TetroVideo.